Rest
by amber kupy
Summary: Buffy tries to take care of Spike.


Title: Rest  
  
Authors: Amber Kupy and Daquiri Seffib  
  
Email: amber_daquiri@hotmail.com   
  
Rating: G  
  
Summary: Buffy tries to take care of Spike.  
  
Pairing: B/S  
  
Spoilers: Beneath You  
  
Disclaimer: We don't own the characters, we're just borrowing them.  
  
Authors' Notes: This is not part of our TI series. 'Rest' is a completely different style for us - we hope you like it, it was a true labour of love.   
(Don't worry, we haven't stopped working on it, real life has just slowed us down a bit. We're about half way through the next chapter.)   
This will be our last posting on ff.net. Due to the new fascist rules, we feel our stories are no longer welcome. We will be posting to http://spuffyonline.com/bscentral/index.php for the remainder of the TI series, and we are working on our own web page.  
  
R, thanks for all the support, and teasing to get us off our asses and writing. To the people on the island, well, we'll see a lot of you shortly!  
  
We love feedback! Tell us what you think at amber_daquiri@hotmail.com  
=======================================================================  
Rest  
  
  
"Buffy... can we rest?"  
  
It was the acrid smell of burning flesh that finally shocked Buffy out of her paralysis, that made her run up to the limp vampire hung against the altar cross and try to pull him free. But the damage had already been done. Trying without success to avoid touching him where he'd been burned, Buffy wrapped an arm around Spike's waist and half-pulled, half-dragged him off the cross.  
  
As she gently as she could, she laid him down on the floor in front of the cross. The shuddering vampire instinctively rolled onto his side, curling into himself, whimpering with every movement. He was only semi-conscious at best; whatever storm had overtaken him, it was gone now.  
  
Carefully she eased him onto his back, hoping to get a better look at his wounds. It was obvious that the movement hurt him, but she needed to asses his injuries. And his back was the only part of his upper body that wasn't burned.  
  
"God, Spike." Buffy's voice broke on the words as she looked at him.  
  
His chest, his beautiful, pale, perfect chest was blistered and red, with burns still forming. They extended down his inner arms, and across the right side of his face. In wonder and horror, she ran her hand gently across his chest next to the line of the burns, unwilling to touch the angry, reddening blisters. Though he was barely conscious, Spike recoiled from her touch, trying to pull himself away, muttering something too indistinct for her to make out.   
  
It was too much for Buffy to take in. Spike with a soul, Spike clearly insane, in so much pain, so damaged and broken. And oddly, the thing that was currently affecting her the most was the fact that he recoiled from her touch. More often than not, since he'd been back he'd flinched away from her.  
  
On autopilot, trembling, Buffy looked around, taking stock. She needed to find a way to get Spike out of here, somewhere safe and quiet and away from the sun, where she could try to figure out what the hell was going on. A phone, she needed a phone to call someone to come and get Spike, to help her move him.   
  
She held her grip on his forearms, not letting him withdraw. "Don't talk," she told him, her voice almost steady. There was nothing in the small chapel that looked like it would be any use in tending to an injured vampire, and no phone in sight. There was a door behind the altar. Maybe there would there be a phone in there? She breathed in sharply, pulling herself together.  
  
"Don't move, don't talk, I'm going to help you." He didn't respond, but after a moment, his hand reached slowly up to brush away her tears. She drew in a sharp breath as he touched her, and his hand paused hesitantly, and dropped again. Abruptly she stood, backed away.  
  
"I'm going to go find a phone, I don't want to have to carry you back. Your chest..." she trailed off, her eyes locked on his charred chest. The pain must be unimaginable, but Spike seemed to only notice the pain in passing as he continued to babble to himself. Half finished words, fragments of ideas. "Just lie on your back, okay?"  
  
Phone. She needed a phone. Rubbing an impatient hand across her face, wiping away already-dried tears, Buffy slowly turned and walked towards the door at the far side of the altar.   
  
The door was locked, but a swift kick had it flying off its hinges and splintering across the floor. There was a small office inside. Nothing but a chair and desk and a couple of metal filing cabinets, but there was a phone on the desk, and that was enough. For once luck seemed to be on her side. Picking up the receiver, Buffy gave a quick thanks to whoever owned the office as she heard a dial tone and dialed home.   
  
"Buffy?" On the other end of the line Dawn's voice was a mixture of eagerness and worry. "Is everything okay? Did you take down the big bad?"   
  
"Something like that," Buffy said tightly. "Dawn, I need you to do something for me. I need you to not ask questions, and just do it."  
  
"Okay, now you're scaring me. Is everyone alright?" Buffy heard the anxiety in the girl's voice rise sharply, but she had no idea how to reassure her sister.  
  
"Spike's been…" Buffy trailed off, unsure of how to describe what was wrong with Spike. Hell, she couldn't explain it to herself. "He's hurt, Dawn. Something's really wrong with him and we need to help."  
  
There was silence on the other end of the line, then, "Good. I hope he suffers."  
  
"No, Dawnie, not like this, you don't know...." The quiet, lost tone in Buffy's voice must have penetrated, because there was a long silence on the other end of the line.   
  
"What do you need me to do?" Dawn asked, at last.   
  
Buffy told her.  
  
  
  
Alone in the dark church with her own thoughts and Spike's half-voiced mutterings, it seemed like an eternity to Buffy before the wash of headlights alerted her to a car pulling up outside. Strangely calm, Buffy stayed where she was, seated beside Spike where he lay whimpering on the floor, close enough to touch him, but not.   
  
He hadn't moved much - she supposed he was in too much pain - and he still lay as she had told him to, on his back. Torn between the desire to comfort him and her own inner turmoil, she had reached out to him only once, but he'd pulled away. So she just sat, and waited.  
  
The door to the church crashed open as Dawn flew in. She paused in the space where the pews started, and seeing her there, Buffy thought for a moment how grown up her little sister looked. Until she saw her sister's eyes, full of fear and confusion. The thought that she probably had an identical look in her own eyes wasn't lost on Buffy.  
  
Spike startled her by speaking. "It's time now, they're all here. We will know what to do. It can't come in here. The Spark – oh, it burns, but the thing from beneath can't get to it now." It was the most coherent thing he had said since being pulled from the cross.  
  
Dawn looked from Buffy, to Spike, then back to Buffy. "What's he talking about?" she asked. "And, Buffy, what *happened* to him?"  
  
Dawn reached out to touch Spike, but he shrunk away from her and tried to roll back on his side babbling, "Not yet, not ready yet, not time yet. Can't be. No time to make the pieces all fit."  
  
"I don't know, Dawn. This how I found him. There's something wrong. He's broken," Buffy's voice cracked on the last word, a shudder running through her body. "Just help me get him to the car. I'll explain everything later. Everything I can. I promise Dawnie, just please help me." Again her voice broke, and she avoided Dawn's gaze.  
  
Together, they managed to get Spike on his feet and moving, and though he whimpered and groaned in pain, he did not fight them. By the time they had made their way to the church door, tears were silently running down Spike's cheeks. By the time they reached the car, Buffy was close to crying again herself.   
  
Dawn slid into the driver's seat of their mother's Jeep as though it were the most natural thing in the world. After a moment's hesitation, Buffy slid into the back, cradling Spike's head in her lap.  
  
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Buffy asked, gesturing vaguely at the steering wheel and her sister's shoulder. So grown up, she thought. Where have I been all this time?  
  
"I got here in one piece didn't I? Besides, the summer you were gone, Spike..." Dawn trailed off, leaving Buffy to wonder what alarmingly domestic things Spike and her sister had done in her absence.  
  
Dawn turned the key and put the car into gear with ease. At some other time it would have terrified Buffy to see her little sister behind the wheel, but at this point it was a relief to not have to deal with driving. "And anyway," Dawn added, "I watch Xander drive every day. It's not that hard. I'm good at learning by example." She gave Buffy a meaningful look in the rear-view mirror, before reversing away from the chapel. The car lurched only a little.  
  
"Good to know how the machine works, it says it won't matter, but it will. All the-- what? What's that? No, no, I won't. No hardly time, I--" Spike's babble turned into a scream of agony as he brought a hand up to clutch his head. Buffy knocked the hand away from the burns on his face.  
  
"Buffy?" Dawn's voice was small and none too steady. "Buffy, what's wrong with him?"  
  
"I don't know, Dawnie. Just... just drive, okay?" Unconsciously Buffy had started trying to soothe Spike by caressing his head where she had seen him grab it a dozen times in the past, where the pain seemed to hurt him the most when the chip fired. For a moment it seemed to calm him, but then he was fighting her again, writhing in pain. She couldn't tell if it was physical or mental.  
  
"But he was fine earlier. What happened tonight? What did you guys go up against that did this to him? God, he's burnt everywhere, and he sounds --" she paused, and Buffy looked up, meeting her sister's eyes in the rearview mirror. "He sounds crazy, Buffy."  
  
"He was like this before, okay? When I saw him in the basement. It's why I didn't tell you then. That and being distracted by saving your life from homicidal spirits. When I went back to find him, he was gone. Then tonight… well you saw him, he was different, calmer than I've ever seen him. Then this."   
  
"But what hurt him like this? Did you--?"  
  
"He did this, Dawnie." Buffy's voice was barely above a whisper. "He draped himself over the cross."  
  
There was a long pause as Dawn pulled out of the church's driveway and onto the road. "What do you think happened to him? To make him all crazy?" she asked after a couple of minutes.  
  
"I don't know. He came back," Buffy paused and let out a short laugh filled with bitterness and despair. "He came back wrong."  
  
"I never expected it to be like this," Spike said suddenly. "Didn't know what I was getting myself into."  
  
Buffy looked down, startled. "What? Spike?" He was looking back at her with calm, dark eyes.  
  
"You're right, luv, I came back wrong. It's all gone horribly wrong." He closed his eyes as a wave of pain seemed to roll over him. "Bloody Hell, I hurt everywhere. Inside and out. What did I do? Didn't try to get a tan, did I?"  
  
"Spike. We'll help you, just stay still." Glancing up, Buffy caught her sister watching them in the rearview mirror. As nice as it was to have her sister's support, Buffy preferred her to be watching where they were going. "Dawn, keep your eyes on the road."  
  
"You let the Bit drive?" Spike asked, trying to sit up. Buffy held him down. "She's not hardly ready for the open road yet."  
  
"It was either that, or you could have walked home." At some other time her voice would have been filled with sarcasm, but tonight her response was void of any emotion.  
  
"No, I don't think I could have managed that just yet." Looking down, Spike seemed to take in his damaged arms and, chest for the first time. "Bugger. That's going to take a while to heal."  
  
"Try not to move," Buffy said, a bit grimly, fighting down the part of herself that was profoundly uneasy with the idea of a suddenly-lucid Spike in her lap.   
  
Something felt off, this was not how Angel had acted at all. Angel had come back completely wild, and slowly found his humanity. But Spike seemed to be swinging uncontrollably back and forth between madness and sanity. Spike had always been different from other vampires, but nothing made sense about these sudden bouts of craziness and lucidity. Buffy's thoughts chased each other around and around as she tried to figure out what was wrong with Spike.  
  
"We're home," Dawn announced quietly as she pulled into the driveway.  
  
"Okay. Spike, I'm going to get out first. Dawn and I will help you out and inside. I'll clean you up once we're inside." As she spoke, Buffy eased Spike's head off her lap and exited the Jeep.  
  
"Ready when you are, luv." Very gingerly, Spike inched his body towards the car door, sliding out until his feet were planted firmly on the ground. The pain of his every movement evident on his face, Spike lifted his hand for Buffy to grab and pull him out of the car. "Right. Let's do it, then."   
  
Carefully, slowly, Buffy got him out of the car and standing. She slid an arm around his waist, taking as much of his weight as she could, easing him upright. Looking at him, Buffy waited until he nodded before they began to walk towards her house.   
  
They were both concentrating so hard on just standing upright that neither noticed the fallen tree branch in their path. It was really nothing more then an twig, but it was enough to throw Spike off balance, causing him to lurch into Buffy, and the hand Buffy had on his hip to slide direction into one of his raw burns.  
  
Suddenly he recoiled away from her in intense pain, and it was all she could do to keep him from tumbling to the ground.  
  
"Nononono! NO!" he screamed as she grabbed for him. "Get away, all of you get away, No more, don't want it any more!" Dawn, who had rushed forward to help took a couple of stumbling steps away from the screaming vampire. "I can hear you, but I'm not gonna listen this time. Stop it. Stop it! It's not the right time. Don't shout. Please don't shout." As Buffy and Dawn watched on in fascinated horror, Spike brought his arms up to his head as if to protect it. "Get it out, make it get out, make it GET OUT! Not ready, not time, oh God it..." Pulling completely away from the Slayer, Spike fell to his knees on the concrete path.  
  
The sisters looked at the fallen vampire in shock and horror, he was curled into a ball, mumbling, every few seconds cocking his head as if listening to voices only he could hear.  
  
"Buffy?" All the hostility that had been in Dawn's voice earlier that evening had vanished, and now she sounded like the scared girl she was.  
  
"Dawn, go in the house and get some blankets and put them on the couch," Buffy said tersely. "Then get all the first aid supplies we have. See if we have any Scotch left over from when Giles was here."  
  
Dawn looked blank for a moment, but then she draw herself together and nodded. "Right. Um, can vampires go into shock?"  
  
"I don't know! God, Dawn, just do what I say for once!" Tears had started rolling down Buffy's cheeks again, mingling with the dry tracks of the ones that had fallen earlier that evening. "Please Dawn. Just, please." Seeing her sister's distress, Dawn turned to obey without any further questions.  
  
Once Dawn was safely inside Buffy placed her hands on either side of Spike's head, forcing him to look at her, trying to make him look her in the eye. It took several long moments, but he seemed to finally be looking at her, though he was still mumbling.  
  
"Spike? I know part of you is in there somewhere. I have to get you into the house, like now. This will hurt, and I'm sorry." She looked at the oozing wounds on his body. "I'm sorry."   
  
"That makes three of us," he muttered, looking away. "All so sorry, so very sorry..."  
  
"God, what's going on in there?" As Buffy released his head Spike let out a gasp, and Buffy flinched in sympathy.  
  
"It's alright, used to the pain," he said, and Buffy's vision blurred with new tears. "Sides, won't burn like the Spark does."  
  
Deciding to act before either could think too much about how much pain Spike was about to be in, Buffy threaded her arms around him from behind. Gently she then lifted him off the ground as best she could while still avoiding the burns across his chest and arms. He wasn't heavy, but he was taller than she was, and limp, and she couldn't seem to lift all of him at once without touching his injuries more than seemed like a good idea.  
  
Somehow she managed to get him into the house and halfway to the couch before Dawn reappeared, bearing blankets and miscellaneous first aid gear. No Scotch to numb the pain. Tears were running down Spike's face again, running though the sores on his chin and dropping into the open burns on his chest, yet he was completely docile as Buffy arranged him on the couch.  
  
"Hey, Buffy, I didn't know what--" Dawn stopped, looking down at her sister, crouched on the floor beside the moaning vampire. "Oh."  
  
"Look," Spike muttered as Dawn put down the first aid supplies, "she's brought all the parts to fix it, but it's too broken to ever be put to rights again. Too many pieces to fit together, they'll never make a proper go of it." As suddenly as it has started the stream of dialog stopped. Buffy could actually see the confusion and inner turmoil leave Spike's eyes.  
  
"Spike? I'm going to clean and dress some of your burns, okay?"   
  
A slow smile spread across Spike's face as he looked up at Buffy, quickly replaced with a casual smirk when she looked back down at him.  
  
"Clean away luv. Just be gentle," he said in a casual drawl, so full of sex that it took a few seconds for his words and tone to penetrate the shock that clouded Buffy's mind.  
  
"Spike?" Buffy asked. He appeared to be lucid again, but the sudden changes in his state of mind were disorienting. And if this was Spike, which Spike was it?  
  
"Yes, pet? Don't worry, I'm in control again. Won't be hollering at the nothings any more." He glanced up an Dawn, "Nibblet, don't be fretting so. With Big Sis looking after me, old Spike will be right as rain in half a tic."   
  
"Yeah, you're all safe and sane now, huh, Spike?" Buffy asked, tightening the end of a bandage around his arm. "I think maybe you better just try not to talk too much."  
  
"Now, luv, don't get all huffy, not entirely my fault this situation, now is it?" Clear blue eyes bore into clouded hazel. It was Buffy who broke their connection as she leaned down to get more gauze.  
  
"Spike? What happened to you? Where were you all summer?" Dawn looked at him, pausing momentarily from cutting gauze to be used as bandages on his chest.  
  
"Well now, Bite-sized, that's quite a story and not one I feel up to telling at the moment." Again, blue and hazel clashed as Spike spoke.  
  
"That's as much as I can do for your arms," Buffy said, sitting back, and not coincidentally, neatly interrupting any chance of further conversation between Spike and Dawn. "How does it feel?"  
  
Spike did a little side-to-side shimmy, squinting into the distance. "Well, it's a bit uncomfy on the left side..." She started to lean across him to see what he meant, when, suddenly entirely too close for comfort, Spike grinned up at her, tongue flicking across his lips. She drew back quickly.   
  
"Tough. Deal with it." Her responses were almost automatic. Something wasn't right. Spike felt very, very off – even for him. "Let me look at your chest."  
  
"I'll show you mine, if..." Spike stopped, letting the sentence complete itself. Dawn gasped, and Buffy very nearly hit him out of pure irritated reflex.  
  
"God, Spike, you're such a pig. Why do I even bother?" With an air of detachment, Buffy set about cleaning and dressing the wounds on chest and chin. Some were so bad, she was scared to do more then place a loose bandage over them. The ones on his face, she just left alone. They weren't nearly as bad as the ones on his arms and ravaged torso.  
  
Accelerated vampire healing powers, Buffy told herself, surveying the damage. Shit, who was she kidding? Even for her, it would take weeks for some of these burns to heal. They had all fallen into a very uneasy silence that was shattered by a scream when Buffy's necklace accidentally brushed over one of the opened burns.  
  
"God! Spike I'm sorry-" Quickly, she snatched the little Celtic cross away from him.  
  
"S'okay, s'fine, doesn't matter at all. Just a small thing, just a little bit of fire." Bewildered, Spike looked down at his mostly covered torso. "Plastered over all the cracks, you have, but the foundation's not sound." He looked back up at her, face full of confusion and fear. "Falling down, all falling... when did the house fall down?"  
  
"What's wrong with him Buffy? Why is he fine one minute and all insano the next?" Dawn's bewilderment was tempered with fear and a slight undertone of anger.  
  
Buffy shook her head wearily. "While he was gone... something happened. I don't know..." she trailed off, unwilling to lie, unable to tell the truth. "He's pretty clearly crazy. I don't know why he seems sane sometimes. Maybe it's part of it. I just don't know."   
  
"Don't you tell me to be quiet," he replied, angrily. His eyes would no longer focus on Buffy's; rather, he seemed to be staring off into the space beyond her left shoulder. "I know, children should be seen and not heard, but it's all right, I belong with the grown ups now. Please, not again, never again. It's not the right place. I'm trying the best I—No, I am. Don't have to be so loud, I'm not bloody well deaf. No more shouting, no more. Begging. Please, no more…" Spike's cries subsided into pitiful whimpers.  
  
"There must be something setting him off," Dawn continued once he was quiet. "Or else why was he fine before you went out? What made him change? And why did he burn himself? For that matter, what were you guys doing in a church?"  
  
"I just don't know, Dawnie. I don't know what causes it. But I can see the shift happening. It's almost as if he's fine and in the real world one moment, then in his own little world the next." She paused. The words raised images she'd sooner forget, of her own little insanity episode a few months earlier. The shifting between worlds, not sure what was real, fighting off the influence of the poison. It had been unsettling for sure, and the only time she hadn't been almost catatonic was when she was homicidal. Looking at Spike, she felt a rush of empathy and sympathy.   
  
And then it hit her. In the church, Spike, while clearly disoriented and crazy, was making a weird kind of sense. He was not shouting an unseen voices, nor had he referred to anyone being with them in the church. In the basement of the school, in the alley, in her drive and living room there seemed to be something that only Spike could see and hear.  
  
"Dawn, I need you to do something for me. Okay?" Barely waiting for her sister's nod, Buffy continued, "I need you to go to my weapons chest, get all the crosses you can from it, holy water too. Then go up in my room, there are a bunch more crosses under the bed and in the drawers of my vanity. Get them, and the hammer and nails. Those are under my bed too. I need you to put the crosses in my room, by the window, door, around my bed, just not too close. Okay?"  
  
"I don't think he's going to--" Dawn started, then paused. "Oh. They're not to use on him, are they? They're to use for him. Buffy, I don't understand, what's happening? I mean last I heard, we hated Spike. What I mean, after what he tried to do to you, and now you're helping him, and not telling me what's going on. Or calling Xander and getting him to help us."  
  
"Take a good look at him, Dawn." Buffy's voice was flat, emotions pulled firmly under control, as she gestured to her former lover. "Does he look like he could hurt a baby, let a lone me? There's something very much of the bad going on here, and I think it's trying to get to Spike first."  
  
Dawn looked like she wanted to say something else - or keep saying the same thing until she got a better answer - but she just nodded and went over to the weapons' chest.  
  
"Dawn, do you know if we still have any candles, incense, or something left from when Tara lived here?" When no answer was forthcoming Buffy looked up at her younger sister. Dawn appeared to be making a detailed study on the inside of the weapons' chest. "Dawn? Did you hear me?"  
  
"You pretty much cleaned us out in the Great Magical Purge of 2001," Dawn replied without turning around. Her tone suggested that she still hadn't quite forgiven the loss of their mother's Kokopelli statue. There was a pause, and then she added, a little begrudgingly, "But, there, um, might be some stuff left over. That Tara sort gave me. I don't want you to freak out, or anything. I didn't steal it, I would never steal from her. It's just that you were gone, and I wanted to feel safe-"   
  
"Never safe, it won't ever be safe again. Here, here is good. In the arms of love. No, not love, love hurts. Like the Spark it burns and punishes all the wrongs. Not right, not right at all." Spike turned pleading eyes to Buffy, "Please make it right? Don't talk to her, get away! She's the one to make it right! No I did it for her. To be loved by all. They will! No, no, no, no. NO!" Again he broke off, shaking, seeming to be in pain from more than the burns.  
  
"Right now I don't care why you have it," Buffy told her sister. "Just get everything together. Start with nailing the crosses up. I'll get Spike up stairs as fast as I can, then I'll help you."  
  
"Buffy, we can fix him right?" Dawn asked in a small voice. "I'm not forgiving him or anything…" Buffy nodded, and she continued, "But he shouldn't be like this. No one should be like this."  
  
"I know, Dawnie. I know," Buffy wasn't sure how she could reassure her sister everything would be fine, when she couldn't convince herself that anything was ever going to be right again.   
  
Dawn gave her and Spike one last look, and vanished up the stairs.  
  
  
Buffy turned her attention back to the groaning vampire on her couch. Oddly enough, she found his ranting, babbling and moaning reassuring. At least with the insanity Buffy knew that it was Spike - fractured, hidden maybe, but he was in there somewhere. When he was calm, it was as if something was playing at being Spike.  
  
"I'm going to take you upstairs," she told him. It wasn't clear how much he understood, but somehow it made things feel more normal if she spoke to him as though he was really there. Which was a first, really, thinking about what was normal in Spike terms.  
  
Spike seemed to understand what she was trying to do, and struggled to get to his feet. "Up to the room? I'm invited up to the room. To be safe in the room?" The hope in Spike's voice broke through some of the carefully-built control Buffy had desperately been trying to keep up since she had seen him again earlier that evening.  
  
"Don't jump to conclusions about this, okay?" she said. "I just... I hate to see... people... hurt, is all." Slipping an arm around Spike's waist, they started towards the stairs. He kept up a constant stream of mumbles, pausing every once and a while to yell, and at one point he actually fell, crying out, begging for 'it' to leave him alone, to go away. His obvious pain caused Buffy's eyes to prickle, yet again threatening tears. She blinked until it subsided. They needed to get Spike settled and quiet very soon, before she lost it completely.   
  
Dawn met them at the door of Buffy's room. "I set up a circle around your bed and poured the holy water as close to the bed as I could," she said quietly, stepping aside to give Buffy room to bring the injured vampire through. Looking around the room, Buffy was impressed. There were a few crosses hung neatly around the walls, and candles lit. On the floor, a circle made of some kind of loose white stuff ringed the bed.   
  
"Is this really... real?" Buffy asked, flicking her eyes towards the circle.  
  
Dawn nodded. "I told you. Tara. And, um, I watched some stuff." Off Buffy's look, she added hastily, "Magic stuff. Eww. Don't look at me like that. You know, spells and stuff. So this should keep out some of your basic baddies." She paused uncertainly. "Either that, or I just used the last of our salt to make a mess in your room."  
  
Once Spike was on the bed, and made as comfortable as possible the girls set to work nailing up the rest of the crosses with grim determination. Buffy's bed had been pulled a few feet from the wall when Dawn had set up the circle of protection, and she finished by nailing a Celtic cross above the headboard.  
  
When they were done, Buffy sank down to sit on the bed, surveying their handiwork. She couldn't help remembering that the last time her room had had crosses nailed all around it, she had been trying to keep out the exact vampire that was now laid out on her bed.  
  
"Are you going to be inside the circle or out?" Dawn asked, startling Buffy out of her thoughts.  
  
"What?"  
  
"It makes a difference," Dawn explained. Seeing Buffy's look of incomprehension, the younger girl continued, "For the spell. I have to do a chant now to... turn it on. After that, no-one's supposed to cross it."  
  
"You really know what you're doing just from watching Tara and Willow?" Buffy asked doubtfully.  
Dawn nodded. "So if I let you watch "Wall Street" on HBO, do you think you could learn to trade stocks and cure all our money problems too?"   
  
"Funny, Buffy," Dawn replied, making a face. "Are you in or out?"  
  
"I'm staying here," Buffy replied quietly, patting the bedspread under her hand for emphasis. "I need to be able to help him if... if anything happens."   
  
"Buffy, what else can happen?" The fear was once again filling Dawn's voice, her whole posture was that of unease. "What has happened?"  
  
"Dawn, I don't know how many times or ways I can say, I don't know. Please just do your thing. Hopefully it'll help. Spike needs to sleep. To heal. Maybe after he's slept he'll be able to tell us more." Dawn nodded, but neither sister thought it was all that likely that sleep was what would cure Spike.  
  
Drawing a deep breath, Dawn chanted a short sequence of syllables. Buffy looked at her expectantly.  
  
"Well?" asked Buffy.  
  
"Well what?" Dawn frowned.  
  
"That's it?"  
  
As Buffy spoke, the candles around the bed flickered all at once, and returned to normal. Before she could say anything further, the ring around the bed evaporated in blue smoke. Buffy blinked, and looked at Dawn with renewed respect. The teenager gave a quick, self-satisfied grin.  
  
"Just so you know," she told Buffy seriously, "When things are more normal around here? I'm so gonna be reminding you about this."  
  
"Oh, you better believe it. Starting with how much magick you actually know, and why you seem to know how to drive a car."  
  
Trying to look innocent and hurt, Dawn backed out of the room. "You're just jealous 'cause you can't." Before Buffy could respond, she added, "I'm going to clean up the stuff downstairs, then go to bed." Taking a final look at pair on the bed, Dawn left.  
  
Seated awkwardly at the foot of the bed, Buffy rubbed a hand across her eyes, pushing non-existent hair back from her face, and turned to face him.  
  
The door clicking shut seemed to rouse Spike from his stupor. "They've stopped. Gone, but they'll be back. They're always back. So tired, need to rest. In bed. In bed with the girl. But the girl doesn't want me here. No Spark, no right."  
  
Spike tried to get up off the bed, as if to leave. Hastily, Buffy leaned up to place a hand firmly on an uninjured part of his chest, pushing him back down. She inched a little closer, until she was sitting close enough to hold him down.  
  
"Spike, what do you think you're you doing? You need to rest, to heal." Looking down at him, his skin blistered and burnt, covered in bandages, Buffy felt something turn in her chest. He looked so.. broken.   
  
"Not here," he muttered. "Need to go back. Back to the start, to change. But that can't happen. I can never be...It can never be healed." Despite his words Spike nodded, settling back down. "Always faithful, do what she says. Do what she says, maybe someday I'll be the man she deserves."  
  
His words hit Buffy, summoning less than welcome memories of the effort she'd expended over the summer. They threatening to breach the wall in her mind she'd spent all the time he'd been gone erecting, trying to convince herself that she didn't need Spike, that she didn't care if she ever saw him again. A couple of times she'd even found herself pulling his duster out from the bottom of her closet and looked at it with longing and disgust. Something she had wanted so badly, that had been so bad.   
  
Not always bad, a little voice had reminded her then, just bad whenever it has started to be right. At least until the end. She'd really thought, this time, that she'd never see him again. But now here he was.  
  
"How did we get here?" Buffy asked him finally, in a small voice. "What happened to us, Spike?"  
  
"The Spark, it hurts. These," indicating his injuries, "they hurt, they burn, but not as the Spark does. It was supposed to make it all right between us. To make me the man..." he trailed off looking lost and alone. "Not us. Never us. That's the problem, yeah? There isn't any us. All we do together is bleed." He reached up, fingertips gently trailing across her cheek for the briefest second, then let his hand drop.  
  
"Spike," Buffy whispered, suddenly fighting back tears. She could feel the walls of shock starting to crack and tumble down, letting in the all the fear and pain that the wonderful numbness had been holding back. To see Spike like this, he razor sharp mind and cutting remarks all gone, his swagger and bravado, gone, his smirk and knowing looks, all gone. The being who had known her the best in the world was broken, maybe beyond repair. For her, he said he had done it for her, to make her want him.  
  
She was shaking, shaking hard with the effort of crying, and trying not to cry. It swirled around in her head, fear and pain, regret and loss, and panic and sorrow, and not even she could have said exactly what or who she was crying for except that something very important was gone and she hadn't even noticed until it was far, far too late.  
  
"Shh, luv. Girl shouldn't cry, no need to cry. I'll all be fine in the morning. The sun comes, chases the dark away. Everything will look better in the morning." Again Spike brought his hand up to her cheek. A finger traced the path of a tear, before bring his hand to rest on top of where Buffy's hand rested next to his hip. "We should sleep. We never sleep."   
  
Her brain was shutting down, allowing only the most basic of emotions through, and even those were too much to deal with right now. Buffy sniffled, angry at herself for breaking down, angrier still for... she had no idea, but something was broken that she couldn't fix, and it was her fault. Because of her. "I'm so sorry, Spike," she whispered. "So sorry."  
  
"Not the end of the world," he said softly. "Not yet anyway. Time will come. Don't be sorry. Not you." Gingerly Spike shifted over on the bed, moving over enough so that Buffy could lie down. Too wrung out to protest, Buffy swung her legs up on the bed, half laying, half sitting, a pillow propping her up. "I can be good," Spike said, as though trying to reassure her. "I've changed."  
  
"I know you have, Spike. Believe me, I do realize that much," she told him with sadness in her eyes echoed in her voice. Maybe more than you do, she added silently.   
  
"It's always for the girl. Do what I can for the girl. Hope she notices. Hope you could love..." He looked at her, and for a moment Buffy saw her Spike looking out at her, but then the moment passed, and he was gone.  
  
Thick, fresh tears caught in her throat, and she wrapped her arms around herself. "Shh, no, Spike... shh." She drew a deep, shuddering breath. "Just sleep, okay?"  
  
"You rest too. Never rests enough. Too much to do, don't let others help. Me help. Should be helping, not laying about." Again Spike tried to rise, groaning in pain.  
  
"Please. Spike. Be still, okay? I want you to be still for a while. If you want to help, just be here." She paused, then added quietly, "With me." Buffy pulled her hand free, and brought it up to caress his head, running her fingers through his hair soothingly.   
  
"Can we rest now? Buffy, can we rest?"  
  
"We can rest," she told him gently. With that, Spike seemed content, closing his eyes like an obedient child. After a while, he seemed to fall asleep. With sleep evading her, Buffy continued to watch over him. Sleeping, he didn't look insane, didn't look like he had a soul. He just looked like Spike, hurt and in pain, but still... Spike. She wished she knew what that meant.  
  
In the morning she would call Giles, see if he could help at all. Tell him about the Slayer dreams, about Spike echoing what the girl in her dreams had said. Tell him about Spike, and beg him to help.   
  
Much, much later, exhaustion took over, and she too drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep. 


End file.
